Murad directs Board of Revenue to rewrite Record of Rights ensuring transparency

KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah on Friday directed the Board of Revenue (BOR) to rewrite the Record of Rights and clear any suspicious entries marked in red by following a transparent process.

“This will ensure that rightful owners receive their legal rights,” he said while presiding over a meeting of the BOR at the CM House.

The meeting focused on rewriting the Record of Rights and addressing the issue of suspicious entries, and was attended by Sindh Chief Secretary Syed Asif Hyder Shah, Principal Secretary to CM Agha Wasif, Senior Member Board of Revenue Baqaullah Unar, Board of Revenue member Ghulam Abbas Naich, Special Secretary Zaman Narejo and Project Director Saifullah Abro.

The CM was informed that the Board of Revenue had decided to block 946,000 entries in the Record of Rights back in 2019. In response, he emphasised that the Record of Rights was a legal document, and there is no legal basis for marking any entry as suspicious without first hearing from the affected parties.

He pointed out that identifying approximately 500,000 entries with a red mark had caused emotional distress for genuine owners and led to increased litigation. “I don’t want legitimate property owners to be at the mercy of Tapedars, Mukhtiakras and sub-registrars,” he stated.He instructed the BOR to streamline the procedure, create a model digital form, secure his approval and initiate digitisation of the record in two designated dehs in the province. Murad asked the BoR to provide him the names of two Dehs, one from Karachi and one from a rural area, to serve as model Dehs for rewriting the Record of Rights. Regarding the rewriting, the CM was informed that Sindh’s Record of Rights was revised or rewritten every 30 years.

The chief secretary noted that the last revision occurred in 1985, whereas Punjab revised its records every four years and Karnataka and Maharashtra in India revised theirs every 10 years.

Murad stressed that the goal of updating the record was to secure ownership titles, ensure transparency, integrate it with e-registration and provide online services. The main legal provisions regarding the Record of Rights were outlined by the Sindh Land Revenue Act 1967, particularly its Section 39, which specified the documents to be included in the Record of Rights. The Section 42 details the procedures for making entries in the mutation register.

As for digitising the Record of Rights, the CM indicated that the focus should be on V.F. VII-A for agricultural land and V.F. II for non-agricultural land, reflecting the latest ownership entries across 6,090 Dehs.

Abbas informed the CM that the BOR had conducted separate meetings with two companies regarding the digitisation process. Each company proposed a timeline that required four months to develop the software and an additional four to five months for pilot implementation. In the light of this, the CM directed the chief secretary to personally oversee the digitisation of the Record of Rights. “I want you to select one Deh from Karachi and another from any rural district to initiate this work,” he instructed, adding that once the initial efforts were deemed satisfactory, more Dehs could be addressed.

He also tasked the CS Sindh with assigning the responsibility of rewriting the Record of Rights to the IT company established by the Sindh government.